Microsoft aims at Amazon with Azure virtual Windows (and Linux!) IaaS

Microsoft matches AWS on price with its Infrastructure-as-a-Service offerings.

In a bid to take on Amazon and other giants of public cloud infrastructure, Microsoft announced on April 16 that it has launched its own Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offering as part of Windows Azure. Stepping beyond Microsoft's Platform-as-a-Service offerings, the new expanded Azure cloud service will allow users to deploy full virtual machines in Microsoft's cloud—including Linux instances.

The offering, which has been in limited release with companies such as the marketing and media firm Digital Air Strike, signals that Microsoft feels it is ready to take on Amazon. Bill Hilf, Microsoft General Manager for the Windows Azure team, wrote in a blog post that Digital Air Strike had been considering using Amazon Web Services before signing on for the Azure IaaS trial. "But [they] concluded that 'when you work for the enterprise, you have to choose Microsoft.'" Hilf added that Microsoft will also match Amazon's pricing on virtual machines and would provide "monthly SLAs that are among the industry's highest."

Microsoft is offering a number of preverified server images running on Windows Server, including instances of Microsoft BizTalk Server 2013, Project Server 2013, System Center, SharePoint (2010 and later), and SQL Server (64-bit versions, 2008 and later). The image library available to customers also includes Ubuntu, CentOS, and SUSE Linux distributions.

Hilf has made inflammatory comments in the past about Linux and open source. In a 2007 blog post, he tried to clarify his comment that "the Free Software movement is dead" by saying that he saw Linux as both a competitor and something Microsoft needed to interoperate with. Now his group is looking to cash in on Linux by including it in Microsoft's cloud product line.

57 Reader Comments

An interesting position for MS to be in. Obviously, they can't just sit around twiddling their thumbs while anybody willing to switch to Team Penguin is rolling in cheap EC3 instances, while MS customers don't get to play this 'cloud' stuff; but if I were a VAR, or otherwise involved in the 'selling Microsoft Software, whether in boxes, installed on boxes, or hosted by me, I'd be feeling the same sense of trepidation that MS' hardware OEMs displayed when Microsoft announced 'Surface' and 'Surface Pro'.

Any bets on whether MS will be able to jettison, absorb, or hellotize, their earstwhile partners successfully, and run a vertically integrated shop, or are they overestimating their ability to deliver the services provided by those they are currently scaring away?

They had their own UNIX variant back in the day. Why doesn't Microsoft create their own Linux distro?

The requirement to publish the code for it is probably a major factor in their decision not to make a Linux distribution.

They've already contributed code to the Linux kernel. I doubt they'd have an issue with publishing code that's already under various open source licenses. It's not like they'd be open sourcing the NT kernel.

Hilf has made inflammatory comments in the past about Linux and open source. In a 2007 blog post, he tried to clarify his comment that "the Free Software movement is dead" by saying that he saw Linux as both a competitor and something Microsoft needed to interoperate with. Now his group is looking to cash in on Linux by including it in Microsoft's cloud product line.

Wow, you had to dig back deep in the archives to find something bad to say about this news.

I have to chuckle when I read his blog about Microsoft competing with Redhat and SuSE. Yep, that's the "Free Software Movement's" core, right there! little did he know people would be spinning up piles of disposable virtual Ubuntu systems instead.

... Digital Air Strike had been considering using Amazon Web Services before signing on for the Azure IaaS trial. "But [they] concluded that 'when you work for the enterprise, you have to choose Microsoft.'" (emphasis added)

The core reality is that Microsoft has not done well with Azure. Microsoft's server and tools division showed strong growth during much of the past decade even in the face of competition with Linux. But, they have done poorly in their effort to extend that server success to Azure That failure seems also to be associated with some decline in the competitiveness of Windows server in comparison with Linux. What is not totally clear is whether this phenomenon is cause or effect of Microsoft's apparent choice to focus its future on consumer electronics instead of enterprise computing.

"But [they] concluded that 'when you work for the enterprise, you have to choose Microsoft.'" This is a stupid thing to say because they are relying on status quo and not on having the best products which is a great way to have the status quo shift to your competitors.

An interesting position for MS to be in. Obviously, they can't just sit around twiddling their thumbs while anybody willing to switch to Team Penguin is rolling in cheap EC3 instances, while MS customers don't get to play this 'cloud' stuff;

Don't get to play with this cloud stuff?

Don't know about you, but if you even have a hotmail account (free, crazy, I know) you can login to Azure and get 3 free months worth of compute time. Which has worked out well for me in testing for the past few weeks for checking out the service. Scalable on demand services just like Amazon? That, and MS have been doing it for a while?

I wish Microsoft luck. More competition and choice is good for everyone.

I doubt that the Windows VM architecture can really compete with the many different Linux VM architectures on performance or price, but I've been wrong about things like this many times before.

In the meantime, I'll be looking at non-Microsoft and non-Amazon cloud providers for innovations. More and more, I just want standard platforms that can be controlled using well-known interfaces across many different providers. A one-off solution from any vendor is a non-starter for my needs.

Hilf has made inflammatory comments in the past about Linux and open source. In a 2007 blog post, he tried to clarify his comment that "the Free Software movement is dead" by saying that he saw Linux as both a competitor and something Microsoft needed to interoperate with. Now his group is looking to cash in on Linux by including it in Microsoft's cloud product line.

Wow, you had to dig back deep in the archives to find something bad to say about this news.

Edit:Added quote.

Not much digging. And I don't see it as "bad." It just demonstrates Microsoft's evolution of thinking on Linux since then.

I wish Microsoft luck. More competition and choice is good for everyone.

I doubt that the Windows VM architecture can really compete with the many different Linux VM architectures on performance or price, but I've been wrong about things like this many times before.

In the meantime, I'll be looking at non-Microsoft and non-Amazon cloud providers for innovations. More and more, I just want standard platforms that can be controlled using well-known interfaces across many different providers. A one-off solution from any vendor is a non-starter for my needs.

This! Let me share a personal anecdote. I've been using Windows on my desktop throughout and intend to continue. But recently I've started using a Linux VPS too. For simple needs of hosting my websites. I tried Windows server 2012 and it took most of the space on the 25GB VPS, with no space to install SQL server 2012 and my stuff. So I fired up a Linux VPS just to try. The install with all bells and whistles took about 4GB and I found it more convenient to administer. And cheaper too. So there goes!

Anyone deploying a Linux VM on MS technology is playing a dangerous game. Better make sure that VM isn't something your depending on because MS's track record in dealing with Linux is anything but friendly and cooperative.

Microsoft will never offer there own Linux distro. You can't sue people over patent violations when you give away the technology covered in those patents for free. Remember, its not certain apps that Microsoft uses patents against. Its the core functionality of the OS. They don't want to have to go to court to argue that they should still get patent royalties even if they give away the software, they just want to chose who to extort.

Anyone deploying a Linux VM on MS technology is playing a dangerous game. Better make sure that VM isn't something your depending on because MS's track record in dealing with Linux is anything but friendly and cooperative.

I doubt anyone goes for Linux in MS cloud. Most Azure customers go for mixed environment of Linux + Windows systems in the MS cloud and there is high chance that Azure is the best offering if you need both OSs

An interesting position for MS to be in. Obviously, they can't just sit around twiddling their thumbs while anybody willing to switch to Team Penguin is rolling in cheap EC3 instances, while MS customers don't get to play this 'cloud' stuff;

Don't get to play with this cloud stuff?

Don't know about you, but if you even have a hotmail account (free, crazy, I know) you can login to Azure and get 3 free months worth of compute time. Which has worked out well for me in testing for the past few weeks for checking out the service. Scalable on demand services just like Amazon? That, and MS have been doing it for a while?

Yep, Microsoft sure have been twiddling their thumbs, I must admit.

I didn't say that they were; but that they couldn't(and, indeed, they haven't). The whole point is that, since they also have retail, VAR, and OEM channels for the offerings that Azure effectively competes with, they are in an interesting position on pricing.

They can't do nothing, or price too high, because the cheapie cloud crew will eat their lunch; but lowering prices will likely lead to a nontrivial amount of sales cannibalization and partner alienation.

An interesting position for MS to be in. Obviously, they can't just sit around twiddling their thumbs while anybody willing to switch to Team Penguin is rolling in cheap EC3 instances, while MS customers don't get to play this 'cloud' stuff;

Don't get to play with this cloud stuff?

Don't know about you, but if you even have a hotmail account (free, crazy, I know) you can login to Azure and get 3 free months worth of compute time. Which has worked out well for me in testing for the past few weeks for checking out the service. Scalable on demand services just like Amazon? That, and MS have been doing it for a while?

Yep, Microsoft sure have been twiddling their thumbs, I must admit.

The problem is that I can spin up a Linux VM in 1 GB ram and 5 GB of disk space. Windows on the other hand is a minimum 2 GB ram, 15 GB of disk. Plus you have a license fee for each WIndows VM. Who do you think people are going to chose if they need to spin up 20, 40 or even 100 VMs? Fact is its just cheaper to run Linux in a VM than Windows.

I love MS as much as the next MS fanboy, but reading "monthly SLAs that are among the industry's highest", I can't help but think about how Azure went down from both a Leap-year problem and an expired cert in short time of eachother.

Who do you think people are going to chose if they need to spin up 20, 40 or even 100 VMs? Fact is its just cheaper to run Linux in a VM than Windows.

You're assuming a workload that runs on Linux. For a vast portion of enterprises, they are running internal enterprise workloads on Windows. If they want to "pick up and move" those workloads to a cloud hosted service, Azure is the fastest way to get there (especially with the network virtualization stuff). It doesn't really matter what Linux VMs cost. They could pay you to have them host them - it doesn't help if your 20+ years of custom in-house applications don't run on Linux.

They had their own UNIX variant back in the day. Why doesn't Microsoft create their own Linux distro?

The cost/benefit makes no sense for them. There are plenty of distributions already, some of which play nice on Hyper-V and thus Azure today. And companies happy to do the support/interoperability assistance. And as a customer, you would lose the benefits of the existing package/management infrastructure that is in something like Ubuntu - now there is yet another place to host packages of some format that have to be updated.

And that's all without the inherent enterprise support mindset that comes with Microsoft server products. The "I'll just update all the packages all the time and hope it all works, and compile new stuff if not" concept simply doesn't work in that model. Lots of orgs aren't even willing to do the monthly update cycle that exists today and that's a very controlled process relatively speaking.

An interesting position for MS to be in. Obviously, they can't just sit around twiddling their thumbs while anybody willing to switch to Team Penguin is rolling in cheap EC3 instances, while MS customers don't get to play this 'cloud' stuff;

Don't get to play with this cloud stuff?

Don't know about you, but if you even have a hotmail account (free, crazy, I know) you can login to Azure and get 3 free months worth of compute time. Which has worked out well for me in testing for the past few weeks for checking out the service. Scalable on demand services just like Amazon? That, and MS have been doing it for a while?

Yep, Microsoft sure have been twiddling their thumbs, I must admit.

The problem is that I can spin up a Linux VM in 1 GB ram and 5 GB of disk space. Windows on the other hand is a minimum 2 GB ram, 15 GB of disk. Plus you have a license fee for each WIndows VM. Who do you think people are going to chose if they need to spin up 20, 40 or even 100 VMs? Fact is its just cheaper to run Linux in a VM than Windows.

You'd don't need 2GB of RAM, nor do you need 15GB of disk space for Windows. You can install Windows 2012 Core with 512MB of RAM and ~5GB of disk space... though 10GB is recommended (logically you should only be doing core installations in the cloud).

Of course Linux is generally, though not alwears cheaper than Windows in the cloud and elsewhere (if you need to run a distro like Oracle Linux you're stuck paying for support for your Linux instances, so it's not free), but that's not the point; if you have a Windows workload you need to run it on Windows (whether or not it should be a Windows workload is another matter).

An interesting position for MS to be in. Obviously, they can't just sit around twiddling their thumbs while anybody willing to switch to Team Penguin is rolling in cheap EC3 instances, while MS customers don't get to play this 'cloud' stuff;

Don't get to play with this cloud stuff?

Don't know about you, but if you even have a hotmail account (free, crazy, I know) you can login to Azure and get 3 free months worth of compute time. Which has worked out well for me in testing for the past few weeks for checking out the service. Scalable on demand services just like Amazon? That, and MS have been doing it for a while?

Yep, Microsoft sure have been twiddling their thumbs, I must admit.

The problem is that I can spin up a Linux VM in 1 GB ram and 5 GB of disk space. Windows on the other hand is a minimum 2 GB ram, 15 GB of disk. Plus you have a license fee for each WIndows VM. Who do you think people are going to chose if they need to spin up 20, 40 or even 100 VMs? Fact is its just cheaper to run Linux in a VM than Windows.

Yes... and, who has 2GB ram and 15GB available for a VM in a server box... is just crazy...

Linux running on Microsoft servers... Hell freezing over... The longer we live, the more such wonders we see

And Steam on Linux. These are crazy times.

... Steam where you can buy closed-source games. Paid games today. Paid general applications on Linux tomorrow. Crazy and very interesting times indeed!

The 100 or so games on Steam is a start. Let's hope Steam picks up steam on Linux and we see a rich collection of games soon!

Here's hoping.

I see most technology become a commodity and instead of selling software, companies sell support contracts. Not to say this will become the norm, but I can see companies converting their products to opensource then just selling professional support. Kind of a best of both worlds.

Sean Gallagher / Sean is Ars Technica's IT Editor. A former Navy officer, systems administrator, and network systems integrator with 20 years of IT journalism experience, he lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.